Hey.I am learning Russian (currently about 5 weeks worth of classes). Could anyone here please read over these paragraphs on "My Town" and point out any mistakes? I did it using a dictionary and some Google translate. I am more worried about grammar mistakes/concordance than anything else.

Ambermutt wrote:Hey.I am learning Russian (currently about 5 weeks worth of classes). Could anyone here please read over these paragraphs on "My Town" and point out any mistakes? I did it using a dictionary and some Google translate. I am more worried about grammar mistakes/concordance than anything else.

I am not sure how useful a reply posted 2 weeks later would be to you (I am a rather infrequent visitor to this forum), but, in case you still care about the mistakes in your paragraph...

мой город (town).Grammatically correct, but sounds unnatural in the context of your narrative. It is better to say "Город, в котором я живу — (town)." (i.e. "The city in which I live is [town]".)

она в провинции (province) в (country).The pronoun refers to the word город in the preceding sentence, which is masculine. Also, for stylistic reasons, it is better to add the participle расположен ("is located"). So you should write "Он расположен в провинции...".

некоторые сказать атэнас имеет лучший погода в мире.The verb сказать must be conjugated to agree with the subject. You want either the present or the future tense here. The verb сказать is perfective, and so lacks a present tense; it would be perfectly correct to use the future and say "некоторые скажут", as long as the meaning that you intend is "some would say". If you want the present tense ("some say"), you need to pick an imperfective verb, such as говорить: "некоторые говорят". In either case, following the verb, you need the word "что" ("that"); unlike in English, you cannot omit it. Atenas in Russian is Атенас (the Spanish letter e is transliterated using the Russian э at the beginning of a word or after a vowel, and by the Russian e after a consonant; see Wikipedia for Spanish-Russian transliteration rules). Finally, in Russian, a town does not have a certain kind of weather; instead, the weather exists in ("в") the town (and the town needs to be in the prepositional case). So the correct way to write your sentence is "Некоторые скажут, что в Атенасе лучшая погода в мире" or "Некоторые говорят, что в Атенасе лучшая погода в мире".

это не правда.Written as one word: "Это неправда".

он очень жаркую погоду.Again, in Russian, weather exists in a city (and hence, weather is in nominative, not dative). For stylistic reasons, you should avoid saying "in it" ("в нём") when talking about weather in a certain territory; either leave the noun ("в Атенасе") or replace the whole construction with a pronoun like "тут" ("here"). Hence, "В Атенасе очень жаркая погода" or "Тут очень жаркая погода".

я жить там в течение двенадцать года.Conjugate жить. If you are in Atenas, from your point of view you are "here" ("тут"), not "there" ("там"). The expression "в течение" has similar connotations to the English "during" or "over the course of", and is not appropriate here (and if it were appropriate to use "в течение", you would have had to put the interval in the genitive case). For intervals of 5 years and greater, you must use the word "лет" instead of "года" (this is one of the many remnants of the dual number that remain in Russian grammar). Hence, "Я живу тут двенадцать лет".

он не большо, а маленький.The word you are looking for is большой.

он имеет короткая улица.Assuming you meant "it has short streets", you would need to put "short streets" in plural. In addition, in Russian to express the quality of an object's attributes you use the "у N M" construction instead of the verb "иметь" (and that verb, by the way, is used far, far less frequently than the English "have"). Hence, "У него короткие улицы".

церковь белая в мой город."В мой город" would mean "into my town". To say "in my town", you must put "my town" in the prepositional case. In addition, your word order is completely unnatural, and for stylistic reasons, it's better to add the verb "есть" (you generally don't omit it when talking about one object existing at some undefined location in a territory). Hence, "В моём городе есть белая церковь".

парк перед церковь, он очень крас."Перед" requires that "церковь" be in accusative (even in English, you would say "in front of the church", not "in front the church"). In the first half of the sentence, the emphasis is on the park (since the second half of the sentence is about the park), not on the park's location. Therefore, in this case the natural word order would be "[location] парк". Finally, the adjective you are looking for is "красивый". Hence, "Перед церковью парк, он очень красивый".

многие пальма и зеленая скамь.Assuming you meant "There are many palms and green benches in it", you would need to put palms and green benches in plural and genitive (if you know French, this should remind you of "beacoup de"). In addition, Russian has different words for "many", depending on whether you mean "numerous" ("многие") or "a lot of" ("много") (if you know Spanish, this should remind you of "muchos" vs. "mucho"). A bench is "скамейка", not "скамь". Finally, for stylistic reasons, it's better to specify the location: "в нём" ("in it"). Hence, "В нём много пальм и зелёных скамеек".

мой дом отдаленныйиз центр города.The correct preposition is "от" ("away from"), not "из" ("out of"). Both prepositions require that the noun ("центр") be in genitive. The word "отдалённый" has some of the same connotations as the English "distant"; the more natural word to use here would be "далеко" ("far away"). Hence, "Мой дом далеко от центра города".

я путешествовал в автобус."Путешествовать" means "travel", with the connotation of tourism or a journey to distant lands. The normal word for "go using a ground vehicle" is "ездить". In Russian, when talking about a mode of transportation, you go "on" ("на") a bus (you would say "в" if the bus was a location in which some event was happening). And the preposition "на" in the sense of "on" requires that the noun be in the prepositional case (for "onto", you would use the accusative). Hence, "Я ездил на автобусе".

он неудобный а быстрый.The contrastive conjunction "а" (which, by the way, must be preceded by a comma unless it's the first word of a sentence) is not used when comparing two adjectives unless one is negated using the word "не" ("неудобный" does not count, because its "не-" prefix is part of the adjective itself, not a separate word). Hence, "Он неудобный, но быстрый".

tetromino wrote:I am not sure how useful a reply posted 2 weeks later would be to you (I am a rather infrequent visitor to this forum), but, in case you still care about the mistakes in your paragraph...

[Numerous corrections]

I didn't much expect the replies to help me do my homework (I had to turn it in the same day I posted it), I just wanted it corrected for my own good.

Thank you.

He has told us of the darkness, He has shown us deepest night. The rage inside a burning sun, The calmness of its light.

I really enjoy the language and hope to be able to use it someday in whichever field of service I end up doing, but for now I just want to improve and finish up strong in finals these next two weeks.

Reading through the posts in this thread, I find that I can understand what is written much easier and more quickly than I can verbalize or even write down my own thoughts. The hardest part for me is just memorizing all of the different endings -- seeing them on paper allows me to recognize them more quickly than having to pull them out of my own memory.

Hey, I'm new here, but I'm very interested in getting to know the community and learning new things (coding, etc.). I'm always up for a good conversation .

Hello, everyone!If somebody wants to improve russian skills (grammar,conversation) contact me to my skype (shishkov.alexandr) or write me a message to e-mail (katalets@gmail.com).Also I improve mу English skills thereby we can help each other.

I can speak Russian fluently but I can't even write a single word in it. I'm an example of learning by listening. I can read Russian very well. I have no idea about conjugations, grammar, tenses, anything. Oh the benefit of living in Lithuania...

I've bolded the parts that seem really awkward. The following is a rewrite to remove the awkwardness so it sounds more like someone who knows English.

katalets wrote:Hello, everyone!If you want to improve your Russian skills (grammar,conversation) contact me via skype (shishkov.alexandr) or e-mail(katalets@gmail.com).Also I would improve mу English skills thereby we could help each other.

This sounds... better anyway, maybe someone else can have a better re-write for you.

The Great Hippo wrote:[T]he way we treat suspected terrorists genuinely terrifies me.

So I'm working on a few Russian phrases, and this Google translate app has automated read-out, which really helps with pronunciation. My sudden interest in Cyrillicism has been due to one of the fillum posters up on my wall; Человек с киноаппаратом(Man with a Movie Camera)

Now, I know {Человек|Man} is pronounced like "Cello Vek" (thanks, Clockwork Orange!) but I didn't know that {с|With} seems to basically be a hissing sound that connects the words together. I'd been pronouncing {кино|movie} as "kee-NO" which is a bit off, and more of an Anglicisation of the word, due to Vertov's Kino-glaz ("Cinema Eye") theory. As for {аппаратом|Camera} I had no idea. Anna-patom? Of course, I later learned that п=p and р=r, which means it's more "apparatom", similar to apparatus.

So Человек с киноаппаратом is phonetically chelovek s kino-apparatom. However (to my ears) it reads as if it's one single word: cheloveksskinoapparatom. I should probably get myself the Rosetta Stone of it, because it reads too fast for me to parse. Man, learning even a single phrase of a different language is hard! I'm sticking at it, though.

Felstaff (and everyone else, but he's the most recent), I wish you luck in your studies. (Just Felstaff: try translating single words from the phrase, then you can learn to pronounce them at your own pace.) If anyone needs help with Russian, I'll be glad to do what I can.

Les's talk Russian, that's a great idea! I just started to learn it by myself, and my Russian-speaking friend helps me with that. But it seems too hard to master... Wish I could read something in Russian

RegD wrote:Les's talk Russian, that's a great idea! I just started to learn it by myself, and my Russian-speaking friend helps me with that. But it seems too hard to master... Wish I could read something in Russian

It shouldn’t be that tough to pick up the alphabet for reading/writing. Sure, I learned it in a class, but it only took a few days to get used to (handwriting took a bit longer).

I’ve found the trickiest part is verbal aspect, but like anything else, practice makes perfect — повторения, мать учения!

Yeah, it's not hard to read, but to understand what you're reading - that's a bit harder. And by 'a bit', I mean very damn much)) for example, the 'slight' difference between 'есть попить?' and 'есть выпить?' - the first means drinks in general, and the second - alcohol! and there are plenty of such words that can be not what they seem. If you're not Russian, it can take a lifetime to understand all this